Accelerate Your Agile and DevOps Journey with Continuous Testing

The implementation and success of digital offerings are pivotal to the success of enterprises’ business growth. In the path to Agile and DevOps success, enterprises may have to ensure that all components of their IT processes adapt quickly and effectively. How IT leaders choose to future-proof their continuous testing capabilities will have a critical impact on the efficiency and strength of their IT transformations.

To stay ahead of the business outcomes, enterprises may have to be mindful of the approach and providers that enable them to optimize and accelerate their quality assurance capabilities.

Key findings yielded by a recent Forrester study says –

• The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated focus on digital offerings.
• Organizations understand the need to test early, often, and automatically to improve business.
• Pure-play quality assurance providers can play a significant role in specialized quality expertise.
• IT decision-makers especially look toward pure-play providers for consistency in quality and guidance.
• Quality Assurance challenges revolve around process inertia and competing IT priorities.
• Future Quality Assurance needs align with the unique capabilities of pure-play testing providers.

Aligning software quality approach with digital priorities

Enterprises had to maneuver through the escalating costs and business uncertainty during the lockdown times. The focus on automation and digitalization has remained the focal point while adapting to these complexities. Adapting quality assurance practices with agile and DevOps capabilities has been the key.

• Enterprises seek to leverage digital offerings as a means of differentiation
• Efficiency and automation are in focus in building resiliency
• IT decision-makers recognize the need for agile and DevOps practices to enable speed and scale

Significant gap in improving continuous testing capabilities

Majority of the enterprises believe that the key focus of quality assurance practices today is in expanding continuous testing capabilities.

While most of the organization’s recognize the early stages of their agile and DevOps journeys, enterprises still struggle to keep pace with the agile testing requirements.

The recent Forrester study says – “While 52% of respondents said that more frequent releases will have a positive impact on their digital objectives, current software release cycles are still on a monthly or quarterly basis, and only 13% of companies are able to reach a state of biweekly releases.”

Enterprises are still reliant on nurturing internal skills and teams for their quality assurance needs. Relying on specialized skills and expertise of their quality assurance providers might be considered to address these significant gaps in the overall improvement of continuous testing capabilities.

Pure-Play quality assurance approach is leveraged for consistent quality and expertise

To maintain consistency in quality and expertise, most of the enterprises are inclined towards leveraging the pure-play quality assurance approach.

The latest findings from Forrester indicate –

• Functional quality assurance capabilities are broadly outsourced among organizations.
• Firms are keen to take a combined approach of leveraging larger SIs and pure-play providers for specific functions.
• Majority believe pure-play quality assurance providers help ensure consistent quality.

It is imperative for the Software quality to break the barriers of process inertia

The challenges to expedite the required developments in the quality assurance capabilities are more strategic in nature. A recent study says that most decision-makers find it difficult to convince their organizations to embrace new processes and skills to meet new Agile and DevOps needs.

While it is imperative for the organizations to break the barriers of process inertia, half of the enterprises recognize that manual testing is time consuming but find it hard to replace.

In addition, the internal skills are lacking in pursuit of future quality assurance capabilities. Leveraging specialized external providers is becoming imperative in avoiding stagnation and efficiently managing these limitations. The skills and dedicated expertise of pure-play providers are significant considerations in alleviating quality assurance challenges.

Future quality assurance capabilities require the right balance of speed and quality

The recent Forrester study further says, “To address evolving testing needs, most of the organizations are open to outsourcing core capabilities to providers that can provide them with the efficiency and guidance they require. Within this ecosystem, decision-makers take a combined approach in leveraging both specialized pure-play providers for their catered expertise and large system integrators for their scale and existing relationships.”

A few takeaways from the study include –

• Test automation will go further with machine learning.
• Frequency of releases will separate the leaders from the laggards.
• Testing metrics to focus on will be more quality in nature.

While pure-play providers play a vital role in catering to specialized quality assurance needs, they make a significant contribution in addressing quality and agility of business outcomes.

Key Recommendations

Forrester recommends that technology leaders consider the following in addressing their software testing challenges:

• Ensure clear alignment of quality assurance impact on larger digital priorities.
• Take a combined approach to address your quality assurance needs.
• Leverage your pure-play providers to gather the expertise needed for your future quality assurance needs.

View the session to understand how your peers are adapting their testing strategy and implementation to current Agile and DevOps needs, how to optimize partnerships, and how to navigate upcoming challenges in an age of speed and quality.

The key takeaways from this webinar will be –

Current Insights – Key findings from a targeted Forrester study involving 100 IT decision-makers in the US and UK.

Discover – Leading views on achieving the balance between quality and speed.

Actionable Strategies – To address the software testing challenges that hinder your digital acceleration.

Being a global leader in independent quality engineering services, Cigniti is a strong advocate of Quality Assurance and its implementation right from the early stages of the software lifecycle. We encourage customer feedback and believe in including such feedback in our broader quality assurance approach. We take great measures to ensure that we are fully equipped with state-of-the-art services and have partnered with other experts that specialize in providing testing services. Talk to us.